After five nights at Tannum Sands, it was time to move on to Hervey Bay. Our route via Bundaberg would have us partly retracing the route we took to 1770 which took us through Miriam Vale. The Miriam Vale Magpies play in the Northern District Rugby League and passing their home ground, the Gary Larson Oval, we noticed a sculpture consisting of a Magpie and its nest sitting on top of their change rooms. We felt this was more impressive than the town's perhaps more famous Big Crab which is on top of a roadhouse which sells the famous "crab sanga".

As we approached Bundaberg, the sugar cane harvesters were kicking up a lot of dust, accentuated by today's strong winds. As we learned during a tour of the Bundaberg Rum Distillery, it is actually a by-product of the sugar milling process which is the major ingredient of rum, that being molasses. The Distillery receives its molasses from the Millaquin Sugar Mills, which is right next door. We viewed the Distillery's Molasses Well which holds up to 5 million litres. We then learned about how they ferment and distil the liquid before the rum is matured for a minimum of two years before making its way into a bottle. The tour concluded with tastings in the Bundaberg Rum Tasting Bar. After the tasting we had a sandwich lunch in the Distillery's Cafe.

Passing through Childers, Lucinda noticed a sign pointing to Mammino Gourmet Ice Cream and we had to investigate. It is advertised as "100 per cent hand-made gourmet ice cream which is made to a secret family recipe handed down through the generations." We had to choose between six different macadamia flavours, six fruit flavours and eight other flavours, two of which contain the famous Bundaberg Rum. Lucinda had macadamia and ginger while Bryon had macadamia and butterscotch. They were delicious.

It all began back in 1996 when Anthony and Teena Mammino began selling macadamias from a roadside stall and then Teena decided to add macadamias to her grandmother's old-style ice cream recipe. Sadly in January 2017 Anthony passed away and Teena felt it was time to hand over the reins. Fortunately Anthony's cousin Leo and wife Helen took over to keep the operation in the family.

Just after 4pm we arrived at Pier Caravan Park Hervey Bay. This park's only been open for just over a year and as the name suggests, it is nearby the historic Urangan Pier. The pier is one of the longest in Australia and stretches for almost one kilometre into the ocean.

So after setting up the van, we went for a walk down to the pier and went out just far enough to see the Sun setting. It was very colourful, although some of that colour was unfortunately due to the significant amount of smoke that's around from the many bushfires ravaging Queensland at the moment. There were several fishermen trying their luck along the pier, but we saw no signs of success.

Dinner was meatballs with carrot, green beans and potato cooked in a spicy tomato sauce in the Weber.